Samuel Earp Artist Painting Blog

One of the trickiest colours to mix in a landscape painting is green and it’s one that causes artists the most problems. Mix your greens right and they can look amazing and vibrant but get the wrong and they can look acidic and harsh.

In this painting tutorial I will show you how to paint the landscape above and how to mix some basic greens that you can use in a landscape painting.

Mountains are one of my favourite subjects to paint and it’s also a good subject to paint if you are learning to paint landscapes as it’s much easier to see the different tones and values in the scene you are painting.

I normally paint art works in oils but I’ve had a few requests for me to do a painting tutorial using acrylics so this is for the acrylic painters. However if you are an oil painter you still may find this painting tutorial useful as the principles of colour and tone are the same.

For some people painting in oils is not practical, so I wanted to show you that you can still get some good results with acrylics. Also the fact that they dry very quickly can be an advantage.

Whenever I paint a landscape I never just get straight into it, I always do some planning first and the planning always begins with my sketchbook. But why sketch and draw, why not just start painting? Well there is a simple answer, if you go straight into a studio painting it’s likely you’ll run into trouble with the composition.

Planning a painting in your sketchbook first is an important step in the painting process in my opinion. You wouldn’t start building a house with no foundations or prior plans and drawings, it’s the same when planning a painting. Besides which drawing and sketching is fun.

Why is Composition in Landscape Painting Important?

Composition is a very important aspect of landscape painting but one that is surprisingly overlooked. I have visited many art galleries where there are landscape paintings for sale, some with very high price tags that have terrible compositions. Some of the compositions I’ve seen are so bad that it’s at that point I think to myself am I missing something here? Did I miss a meeting? It’s a shame because I have seen many a potentially good painting that has been ruined by a bad composition.

I have always loved landscape art and even as a child when I used to draw and paint all the time, it has always been my favourite subject to paint. As a traditional realism landscape artist and plein air painter I am drawn to colourful, vibrant but natural looking landscape paintings and many of my inspirations come from historical painters, particularly from the 19th century.

In this blog post I have compiled a list and examples of ten of my favourite historical painters which really inspire me and have influenced my own art works. I hope these historical painters give you lots of inspiration you too.

Have you ever been sat in your art studio feeling uninspired and like you’ve hit a wall? Well this sometimes happens to me when I’ve spent too much time in the studio and that when I know I need to get outside in nature and either paint en plein air, or take reference photos or both.

In this painting tutorial I cover the step-by-step process how I painted this art work en plein air and then the details added in the studio.

Inspiration For This Painting

This painting was inspired by the wild rocky coast of Guernsey, a British island located within the English Channel. The coast is often battered by Atlantic storms resulting in some epic swells and stormy breaking waves. The rocky shores around the island adds to the drama of the wild sea and is a never ending source of inspiration for seascape paintings.

In this painting tutorial I will show you the process of how I created this art work. Check out the YouTube video that accompanies this painting tutorial.

Inspiration For This Painting

Last year I was commissioned to do a painting of this very familiar view in Queenstown, New Zealand. The painting features willow trees adorning the shore of Lake Wakatipu set to a backdrop of Dear Park Heights and the Remarkables Mountains.

This painting features water, trees and mountains which are three great subjects to include in a landscape painting.

In this painting tutorial I will show you the process of how I created this art work.

In this blog post I am going to show you how to paint a seascape, based on the coast of Wellington, New Zealand. Whilst this art work is a small painting it a long landscape view as I wanted to capture more of the landforms of this area. The painting measures 12cm x 36cm.

In this blog post I will show you my design process I use for creating a painting. I have a 12" x 36" blank canvas ready and waiting and I want to paint a seascape of the coast of Wellington in New Zealand. But before I get into the painting I need to plan it.

I never just start a painting, I've had too many disasters with paintings where I didn't do any prior planning so I always at least do some pencil sketches but very often a colour study too. Colour studies are small paintings in their own right and in this post I will show you my sketching process and a step by step tutorial on painting the small seascape colour study.